Cypherpunks,
There is a short piece about Skiptap, er, Skipjack, in the electronics section of the October "Popular Science." It has a pretty good diagram and a photo of the Mykotronx chip.
It says "Bill Clinton himself decided that the U.S. government will promote a new encoding chip for communications." It also quotes a guy from NIST who says, "Once you accept the fact that law enforcement has to do its job, this is a good solution." (Fortunately, Cypherpunks generally *don't* accept that "fact.")
Ok...Police = TO PROTECT AND SERVE. To protect us from ourselves....self-righteous fucks decide what to protect us from...with little or no democratic feedback To serve...a long hard disease ridden penis with no condom much less lubrication.. in the butt...part of the S & M appeal of control and authority... Loki